iPhone 13 Camera is blurry

Hi,

I just wanted to chime in, I've just moved to an iPhone 13 pro from my Oneplus 8 pro the lens flare and image sharpness is very poor compared to what I'm used to. I spend a lot of time editing and post processing pictures and have spent a fair amount of time staring at pixels before coming here.

Also, a friend and I had a shootout recently ( he was with an iPhone 11 pro ) where we went around the city centres taking pictures of Christmas installations and most of the photos on the iPhone 11 sharper than what I was able to capture :( . I don't usually see any issues when the subject is near / medium distance, but when at a few meters away and there is a large contrast in lighting, the 13 pro is failing miserably. Its a pity as i really love the phone and os but camera is sub par.

I never had other smartphone since iPhone 3s so I can't say much about it.

My baseline is the said Canon G7X MII and I does feel the gap in sharpness department is narrowed. For scenes with difficult lighting iPhone's deep fusion usually achives better balance in overall color correctness, brightness level and vibrant contrast. If I don't pixel peeping, iPhone image is usually more pleasing to the eye.

Regarding night scene (Christmas), I heard complaints and experiences myself over exposure at high light and clipping of shadow that causes blown out bright sign, blurred detail and color shifting, and all of these very often are amplified by its aggressive HDR processing.

Dialing down EV for 1/3 or 2/3 steps will usually make big differences.

I never posted image here and can only wish my luck: the left one was taken with -0.7 EV; the right one was taken with full, it's terrible in almost all regards.

https://share.icloud.com/photos/079aUp3cYgxCFUA0BEjxRjCCg

Dogcow-Moof:

Sharpness is the least concerned to me in this case. They were shot with 77mm without manually selecting focus point; in this complex and far reaching scene, who is qualified to tell the focal plane?

it's the color shifting, disappeared texture detail and fussy outline around everywhere that I believe been caused by the over exposure which was totally determined by Camera's full auto-mode.

The following is the same comparison photo added a few call-outs denoting what I meant:

(Sorry for not able to directly showing it on the web page; the stupid forum complained my 600KB photo exceeding its max. size limit of 5Mb).

https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/0FfnWbHNREcRMpGRoeVC6VEQg#IMG_1768

Sorry for all of you.

I guessed it's better to tell you their exposure parameters and found out that I was fooled again!

The bad photo was taken with 1x lens zoomed to 77mm.

We don't need to argue the shoddy IQ of iPhone's zoomed processing here again, but how am I fooled when my purpose was to test if could force the Camera to use 3x lens?

I had taken several shoots aiming at other direction in the same site just a few minutes before these two shots and all of them were verified been shot with 3x lens, with or without dialing down exposure manually, after that I got over this paranoid and forgot checking it.

I really can't understand why Apple refuse to give user the option to disable this auto switching of 3x lens to awful 3x zoom or at least indication/alert of the switch, since it is kindly to add option to disable auto macro mode.

>> No, you cannot force use of the optical 3x lens, the scene has to be bright enough for the camera to tell it would result in a better image than the digitally zoomed wide lens

<<

I used the same trick to 'force' Camera sticking to 3x lens in several indoor and outdoor scenes.

Here are two sets of photos just shot a few hours ago at two scenes. In each set, one was taken in full auto mode and the other one purposely dialed down 1/3 or 2/3 EV.

Both photos in full auto mode was siliently switched to 1x lens and zoomed to 3x.

Both photos with dialed down EV sticked to 3x lens.

They also manifest IQ discrepancy; the darker pair may be a little more noisy but are way better in color reproduction, texture detail and outline definition.

Set 1:

A: -0.3 EV, 3x lens as selected

https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/0j9CoQdNGrwF-yJxZdk35ikNg#IMG_9261

B: full auto mode, switched from selected 3x lens to 1x lens behind my back:

https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/0KqZV4yysEvW_TCiIH94exMDg#IMG_9258

Set 2:

A: -0.7 EV, 3x lens as selected

https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/0j1rwAXs4pWjR51DtImeUMAPA#IMG_9252

B: full auto mode, switched from selected 3x lens to 1x lens behind my back

https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/0z1BXbb-y62fOaYFgf3TVuFcQ#IMG_9251

Sonkeli12 (and people affected), if you shoot a Live Photo then when viewing the photo you tap and hold on the picture (10 seconds video demonstration) do you still observe the over-smoothing effect, or instead you only see a blurry picture, as if the lens were "soft" overall (do not mistake this for out of focus!)?

Best done: shooting with camera mounted on tripod and a non-moving subject such a person standing no more than few feet away, carefully tapping the focus on the person figure.

___

I am also seeing the not over-smoothing version (but still blurry/soft) when I take a photo using Continuity on my Mac (right click on desktop - import from iPhone) and well as when I setup a timer (and the result is a burst of 10 photos).

I have covered person's face for privacy in my video sample linked above (cannot attach/upload the short video here; watch it at https://imgur.com/a/jdFAqSP), but you could easily observe persons' exaggeration of hair white color, then the non-HDR but blurry version. Note if you're wondering why is a SE in the video: the Live can be played back using any older iPhone.

Editing the import/burst/different key photo versions using a third party app that can do HDR effect and sharpness/details = I get almost identical results as the Live version, therefore my conclusion the cause is SmartHDR + noise reduction.

I wish Apple would give us some control over the SmartHDR toggle like they allow it on previous generations of iPhones, as well as the noise reduction (I think that too intense noise reduction causes the blurry versions, while adding SmartHDR on top of that causes the smeared effect).

Some of us prefer the more grainy non-HDR classic photography, or at least be able to flip noise reduction and HDR individually. Not everyone can shoot ProRaw workaround which is available only on pro, and anyway shooting ProRaw is not the proper solution IMHO for a point-and-shoot pocket camera.

I am having the exact same issue. I take close up photos for my Instagram account but every time it changes to the wide lens it goes SO blurry!!! When I turn auto macro off, the camera then doesn't focus on the object. So either way its not doing what my 11 pro used to do. I way preferred my iPhone 11 Pro camera. Please Apple, sort this!!!

Digitally zooming in on a photo converted from HDR and lossy compressed then stored using more lossy compression on a web site doesn't exactly prove anything.

If anything the clarity of the background shows that the dogs suffered from motion blur and the phone did what it could to try to make an acceptable image from blurry picture data.

Your second photo of the dog is of a stationary dog - no motion blur.

There are weird pp artifacts around both of the dogs in the daylight pic. The softness and lack of detail is due to the heavy handed AI processing, not subject movement. That's unacceptable, and if it happens on my Pro Max when I get it, I'll be visiting the Apple store.

Mark

A: You can open the image in a new tab, at full size, with 2 clicks in most browsers these days.

B: This isn't compressed all that bad. It still looks almost exactly the same.

C: The EXIF data shows this photo was taken at ISO 32 and it was a sunny day. There is no excuse for the motion blur either. My galaxy Note8 would capture crisp photos of the same dog running at full speed.

Stop trying to make excuses for a $1500 phone that takes pictures that aren't even as good as a flip-phone from 2000.

Hahahaha. If that is the kind of image "quality" you are after, that's great. Maybe it's you that Apple is now programming for.

I wouldn't expect images like that unless I applied at least 3 filters I never use in Photoshop and, in the first case, took the picture with the camera mounted on a paint shaker.

For me, the photos out of my iPhone 13 Pro Max rival the photos from my Nikon DSLR. And yes, I'm completely satisfied.

If those photos aren't good enough for you, then you should sell your iPhone and buy something else.

[Edited by Moderator]

Sounds like you got a good one! I HAD a good one (13 pro), and was very impressed...until I lost it. My replacement 13 pro will not focus sharply on anything when zoomed to a distance object like other posters have experienced. It is headed in for diagnostics/repair, but it sounds like focus is a common problem. Focus using macro is a known issue, but focus on a zoomed distance object is more rare. Do phones have to be returned within two weeks for refunds or will the problem being reported within two weeks qualify for refund (if the repair is not satisfactory?)

Hello ~ More please…as I think those pictures are wonderful. By the time I drag out my Canon EOS R5 and get around to taking the picture…I’ve missed the shot. Candid shots are my favorites so thank you Apple for all the wonderful pictures and memories that my iPhone has given me…shots that I never have gotten any other way.

~Katana-San~

I feel like this macro could be a lot of fun. I played with it for the first time last night (excuse the fact that I didn't wash my face first). I also have a pic of a bird sitting atop of a tree across the parking lot and then zoomed in. It's pretty awesome I think. I hope it stays that way.